'Hannah Montana' Movie Moves to April

Fans will get a glimpse of Hannah Montana's first trip to the big screen a little bit earlier than expected.

Disney announced on Monday (Sept. 22) that the fittingly titled "Hannah Montana: The Movie" will now open on April 10, 2009, three weeks earlier than the previously scheduled May 1 launch.

Directed by Peter Chelsom, the "Hannah Montana" feature finds stealth pop star/ordinary girl Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus) joining her father (Billy Ray Cyrus) on a journey back to the family's ancestral home in Tennessee.

While this will be the first official movie based on the wildly popular "Hannah Montana" series, the character made her large format debut in this spring's "Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert," a 3-D feature that shattered a slew of box office records including highest grossing Super Bowl weekend release.

Cyrus and company will, however, now have only a single week before running into another tween icon. Zac Efron, whose big screen star status may be cemented by this fall's "High School Musical 3," will make a stab at carrying a film on his own with the comedy "17 Again."